It's in a dingy motel in Miami, Florida that he tries to end it all.

He doesn't have full memory of what happened the week before, but he has enough of it to be able to put pieces together. He has video and audio recordings on his phone of him talking about everything that has happened, because he wants Joe to remember. He wants Joe to go insane, because it will make things easier for him in the end.

So for a while there, Joe thinks there's only one way to stop it from happening again. There's only one way to make sure no one else gets hurt.

Because if Joe doesn't exist, then Joker won't either, or at least that's the logic behind it.

It doesn't matter how the attempt (or attempts) were made, but he never goes through with it. He breaks down, sitting on the busted bed in the motel room, tears streaming down his face as he looks at the stained floor. He's sure that his location is a weird metaphor for his life currently, but he's too tired to look into it right now. He hasn't really slept in days, weeks if he's counting the month before after the first week of lost memories, and it's starting to show.

After leaving Bennett on the side of the road in Connecticut, Joe kept driving. Driving through state to state, until he got to Miami. He had planned on going to Florida for a bit, before heading back over to Georgia, but it seemed life had other plans.

The moment it hit midnight on Sunday morning, Joe lost control of the car and crashed it - the front bumper of the car crunched against a tree, and Joe himself flew forward and slammed his head on the steering wheel, and the broken glass from the driver's side window cut him up slightly. So he had crashed in Florida, had blood all over a purple suit that he didn't remember wearing, and he looked like shit.

The problem was, he needed to get the car fixed without being looked at strangely, and it needed to be fixed fast. Before he was a professor, Joe was a criminal defense attorney (and a damn good one, the irony of this is not lost on him at this stage) and he had clients that ended up moving down south. Despite knowing it's not a good idea to be left in debt to some of his older clients, he calls in a favor. Within the hour, a tow truck shows up, and his former client comes out of the passenger side of the truck, greeting Joe with a you look like fucking shit, man, the fuck happened? and Joe waved it off. "Just take the car in to get fixed and tell me where the nearest motel is." The man agrees, asks if Joe needs new clothes too, and Joe looks down at the expensive suit. "Yeah, need to burn these ones. Can you take care of that?"

Sure, says the man, Anything for my favorite lawyer! He leaves out the part that Joe is his favorite lawyer that got him off on a murder charge, but well. Joe used to be a damn good lawyer.

It makes him sick to think of it now.

So as the car got fixed at the shop in Miami, Joe was hiding out in a motel by himself, and the thoughts started to get to him. Still stuck with his memories, Joe couldn't close his eyes without seeing the past life he didn't live, filled with the laughter of a man who looked like him, but wasn't him in the same respect. Small memories of what happened the week before, of torturing people, shooting people, laughing the whole time, and it moves Joe to run to the bathroom to throw up.

This happens quite a few times during the week.

Tuesday, the car is fixed and despite his former client saying it's going to be on the house, Joe pays him anyway with money he knows is stolen from the week before, but he can't care right now. He doesn't want to owe this man anything, and paying him wipes the slate clean. Let me know when you're back in Miami, we could do some business, the man says, and Joe does his best to look amused and nods, "Yeah, sure, I'll give you a call."

He won't.

But it's late Tuesday night into early Wednesday morning that the thoughts start to get too much for him. And he makes his attempts, but never goes through with it.

He thinks that maybe, reaching out to some people will help. One person reaches out to him, and he reaches out to three others.

By the end of it, he comes away from it knowing that he has to say goodbye to someone for the rest of his life, because he can't deal with how that conversation threw him and devastated him. He can't rely on that, but he can rely on the others, and he uses that.

They tell him to come home, despite his protests, and despite his better judgement. Because he still feels that if he's not around, he won't come back, and the world would be better off. Because Joe still wants to hold on to what is still good in his life. But there is a very small part of him that wants to fight back, but he knows there's no real way to do that. Not when this is all inevitable, is unavoidable.

If he doesn't stop, he can be back in Boston in about 23 hours (though he expects it to be longer than that).

He doesn't want to return, because he fears what it will mean when he gets home. What it will tell him about his life now.

He makes a mental note to look into cells or personal panic rooms that he can add to his apartment, something he can be locked away in if he ever comes back. Which, Joe knows he will.

But right now, he rolls his sleeves down, he gets back into Bennett's car, and he starts the drive home.

He knows deep down that it's not the right choice to make, and he knows that it's going to only end up causing more pain down the line, but there's this damn fucking pull to Boston that he can't ignore.

And god, he fucking hates that.